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America currently consumes about 7 billion bbl. of oil a year. When production in Persian Gulf fields was ramped up by 12 billion bbl. a year in the 1960s, global prices collapsed. That made it politically painless for the U.S. to ban almost all new drilling off the Florida and California coasts and then in much of Alaska. With oil, as with textiles, domestic production peaked because others began producing the same stuff cheaper, while we contrived to make our production more expensive. Today Alaska contains 18 billion bbl. of off-limits crude. We've embargoed at least an additional 30 billion bbl. beneath our coastal waters. And we could fuel many of our heavy trucks and delivery vehicles for a decade with the 20 billion bbl. worth of natural gas we've placed off limits in federal Rocky Mountain lands.
Outside our borders, Alberta's tar sands contain 180 billion bbl. recoverable with current technology, and Calgarians are pumping that oil today. A total of several trillion barrels of oil soak the sands of Canada and Venezuela alone--a century's worth at the current global rate of consumption. Then there are methane hydrates. The U.S contains some 30 trillion bbl. worth of those frozen hydrocarbons off the shores of Alaska, the continental coasts and under the Rockies. There's little doubt they too can be extracted economically. If we try, we'll certainly find cheap ways to transform North America's 1 trillion bbl. worth of coal into crude as well. General Patton's Third Army completed its roll across Europe on coal liquefied with German technology.
The price of oil has always fluctuated. In inflation-adjusted dollars, it was higher in the early '80s than it is today. Extraction technologies continue to improve much faster than supply horizons recede. We've got the right know-how and the right planet. What we lack is the political will.
Peter Huber is the co-author, with Mark Mills, of The Bottomless Well (Basic Books; 214 pages)